Sledding
I took Ora 5 and Aspen sledding this afternoon. The hill by our church is a long hill and very popular, so many people had gone down it and packed the snow down. We had a great time. The first few runs were not very long as I was getting used to sledding again. Once a remembered how to steer a sled, we had good runs that went all the way down the hills (about 250-300 yards).Aspen saw the teenagers taking jumps over a ramp that they had built and decided that she wanted to try it. I sat as at the top of the hill and I started to get cold feet; the hill dropped quickly, got very bumpy and icy and then up the ramp. The guys who were going down as fast as they could were getting some good air on their jumps; some of them 5-6 feet. I asked Aspen if she was sure she wanted to do it and she said yes. So down the hill we went. I successfully steered us over the icy bumps and we hit the ramp well and we got air. We came back down hard and I heard Aspen, but I wasn't sure if she was laughing or crying. When we stopped she wasn't doing either and exclaimed "I hurt my bottom." Nevertheless, she wanted to do it again.
We had a great time. One of the more interesting sleds was the top half of a car-top carrier that had two skis attached to the bottom of it. They were able to take 3-4 people down at a time and took it over the ramp a few times.
posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010
10-Year Wedding Annivesary
We delayed our 10-year wedding anniversary because we were busy helping with the Church Missions conference during our anniversary.
We had a B&B in a small town on the Missouri river all to ourselves. Our first day we biked on the Katy Trail in the morning, came back to rest at the B&B in the afternoon and then went to Hermann. We bought some candy at a store on the main street, walked buy the shops in town and then went to the waterfront. Enid took a few pictures there:
Then we went to the Stone Hill Winery for dinner. Before dinner we took the tour; it was one of the last tours of the day, so it was just the tour guide and us. Enid took more pictures:
Finally, we went to dinner. The wait was long, but we were given a large booth and we enjoyed our meal thoroughly. Since Enid has German heritage and we were in Hermann, we both had very German meals.
The next morning it was time to go home, but we stopped and got some pictures on our way out of town:
We're looking forward to the next 10 years.
posted on Sunday, November 08, 2009
Ewan is 3
Ewan's birthday is tomorrow, but we're partying today. Family came over to celebrate with an amazing Thomas the Tank Engine cake. It is actually shaped like Thomas! My wife saw a picture of it and ordered it via phone, but never asked how much it was. When I went to pick it up and they asked me is it the "$44.99 signature cake?" In my mind I thought I hope not. But it was. LOL. Happy Birthday Ewan.
posted on Saturday, September 12, 2009
KC Ethnic Enrichment Festival 2009
We went to the KC Ethnic Enrichment Festival today. I took a wrong turn and had to go into Swope Park thru the main entrance instead of on Gregory. That would normally be okay, but a lot of people showed up and we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic for about 20 minutes as we tried to get into the park. It was a beautiful day and I overheard one guy saying that he had never seen so many people at the festival: "Usually it's 100° or raining."
The festival was a lot of fun. As we walked in the kids picked up "passports" and each country with a booth had a stamp. The kids loved going from country to county getting their passports stamped. At the Chinese booth, they wrote the kids name in the passports in Chinese. (I assume mandarin, but I don't know.)
After visiting all the booths we ended at Tanzania and spent a long time looking at pictures a teacher had taken while visiting sponsored schools in Tanzania. Kansas City has a sister city in Tanzania and we have a particular interest since on of our Compassion kids is in Tanzania.
At one booth they had belly dancing outfits for sale. I encouraged Enid to buy one, but she settled for a few pictures:
Then we ate. Every booth had ethnic food, but no samples. So if you wanted to try something you would have to spend $1-3 at each booth. Times 47 booths and that's a lot of green. We each picked out what we wanted to eat: Ora 5 had Vietnamese chicken kabobs. I took the vegetables off for him. Aspen and Ewan weren't hungry for supper so they had baklava. Enid had trouble choosing between German and Israeli and chose a sample platter from Israel. I had a gyro from Greece.
Then the kids wanted souvenirs: Ora and Ewan got marionettes from the Mexico booth:
Aspen got a Hello Kitty spoon from the Japanese booth. Enid got a purse, but I don't remember where from.
Labels: Aspen, Enid, Ewan, Ora 4, Ora 5
posted on Saturday, August 08, 2009
Biked to Work!
I've talked about doing it for a long time, but I finally biked to work today! It was 12.4 miles and took 58 minutes. It would have been faster, but my lungs are a bit out of practice and the hills were hard on me. My fastest speed was 35 mph.I was pleasantly surprised by the vehicle drivers. After hearing many horror stories and having my own share of people yell, curse and honk at me in my neighborhood, I encountered none of that on the roads today. All the drivers were courteous and many moved to the far lane.
I was also pleased with the roads in Missouri. The roads all have wide shoulders. 6-8 feet in some parts but at least 2.5 feet in most other places. The drains, which I often hear about as well, were well designed to accommodate bicyclists. In Kansas, the roads are nice, but there are NO shoulders. I was occupying a lane with traffic. For the most part this was not a problem, but in one section, there was construction and I had to ride 2 feet into the lane to avoid broken pavement. The vehicle drivers were still very courteous even during this stretch.
All in all I had a great experience and hope that when I do this in the future that this experience is the norm and not the exception.
posted on Friday, July 17, 2009
Cabin Fever Challenge 2009
Enid and I went on our first organized ride of the year - a 38-mile ride beginning and ending in Wamego, KS. It took us out to Westmoreland, KS and then back to Wamego by way of Flush, KS. (Appropriately, there was a rest room available to us in Flush.)The first part of the ride was pretty nice. It was hilly which typically means that I beat Enid on the downhills (I and my bike outweigh her and her bike) and she beats me on the uphills; although this time I was beating her on those as well. We determined that she was probably just in the wrong gears which we corrected. We had our first stop in Westmoreland. There were cookies and apples and grapes and bananas and water and on and on and on. It was a great rest stop. We peeked in on the elementary school gym and it looked just like every small Kansas school's gym.
We headed out of town, turned south and were immediately in a head wind. It felt like it stopped us. The next 20 miles were all into the wind and they were tough. It reminded me of several days on the BAK years ago and how hard a head wind can be mentally. We pushed through it and made it back to the finish.
We checked back in and then went to the small swap sale that was outside. Enid bought 2 new biking jerseys for $5 each. We then went to eat; Wamego could use some good eating establishments. They have about 4 fast food places and not much else.
The ride was well organized with wonderful rest stops and good support by volunteer HAM radio operators. The state and county police were driving the route to make sure everyone was okay. I hope we can ride the Yellow Brick Road Ride that the same group does in October. All proceeds to go build a bike trail from Wamego to St. George - a route I occasionally biked in high school.
posted on Saturday, April 11, 2009
Leaving on a Jet Plane: Las Vegas & St. George
I just returned from a business trip that took me to St. George, Utah and Las Vegas. My boss and I flew into Las Vegas and then drove a car north-east to reach St. George. We spent a day meeting with a client there and then drove back to Las Vegas.St. George
St. George is beautiful. We drove through an amazing canyon to get to it and the city itself is nestled in between red-rock mesas. It is also very near Bryce and Zion canyons. I walked around the city a bit looking for a tourist information place, but the whole time I was amazed by the mesas. My boss had the better idea. She walked up the mesa behind our hotel and saw the sunset from the top!
In our meeting with our clients, the talked about how fast the city was growing. Most people who lived there had not lived there for very long; many less than 10 years. I could see the appeal. Beautiful land, no allergy problems and the weather was beautiful, too; however I imagine that it is a lot hotter in July and August.
St. George is also home to Utah's first Mormon tabernacle. I wondered what the religious demographics in the area were now since so many had moved in from out of state.
Las Vegas
Once our meeting with clients was finished in St. George, we drove back to Las Vegas, checked into the Luxor (the pyramid one) and walked the strip. My boss's parents live in Las Vegas so she knows the city well. We walked and saw many of the major hotels including catching the water show at the Bellagio. One of my favorite things was the sign outside the Wynn hotel. It was a digital board with a physical part that would move up and down. They used the physical sign to interact with the digital ads to transition between ads:
or squash the Monty Python ads: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzdFKmuwesY.
In one example the physical part seems to be the stand for a digital robotic arm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ9f9kdMUU0&feature=related
By far my favorite was how the physical element interacted with a golf ball. It showed a golf hole and golf ball rolled in from the top bounced off the side and then off the physical sign and then came to rest near the hole. The physical sign then moved up quickly until it "tapped" the ball into the hole.
A conversation about Vegas wouldn't be complete with mention of prostitutes. The lack of prostitutes surprised me. I knew that prostitution was illegal in the city, but TV shows like CSI certainly leave you with the impression that you will see some. I also remember as a kid our family drove through Reno, NV, at 1am and we saw 2 prostitutes. My dad yelled back at as "Boys, those aren't nice girls." We knew what he meant. So it surprised me that I did not see any prostitutes walking around Vegas.
I had been warned about the cards. Lots of Hispanic people were standing on the sidewalks handing out small cards with nude women on them. They had a phone number that you could call for prostitutes. I'm glad some people had warned me. As I walked by, they would attempt to hand me the cards. I just looked straight ahead and kept walking. It seems they were used to that, but they would try very hard. Without telling my boss, I began to use her as a buffer between me and these peddlers, but they would reach all the way across her and put the card in front of me. Even if you did not take them, it was hard not to see them because people who would grab them would then drop them on the sidewalk, so the sidewalks would be littered with all these porn cards. I also noted that they were never in front of a casino. My boss told me that the casino security would not let them there, so they always congregated in front of new construction or empty lots.
So the only prostitutes I saw were the next morning. Our flight left at 6am, so I was getting ready to leave the hotel at 4am. As I was leaving, there were 2 women being escorted out of the casino by security. The only thing that made me realize that they were prostitutes was that they were being escorted out. Then I listened to a bit of their conversation which confirmed my suspicion. I was surprised because they were not amazingly attractive or young women. They were average looking, probably around 30-35 years old and the way they dressed would not have alerted me to the fact that they were prostitutes. It's hard to describe, but they were not dressed normally, but their clothing wasn't sexual either. There were people walking the strip that would have turned my head more than these two. I guess advertising is just as false when it comes to their profession.
So that was my trip to Vegas. In the final review, if you are not there to gamble and you are not there for the skin and you are not there for the overprices shows, Las Vegas doesn't have that much appeal.
Labels: Ora 4
posted on Friday, September 12, 2008
My Birthday
Today is my birthday. Enid bought me new bike shorts and a CamelBak, so I'm equipped to ride. She actually gave me the shorts a day early so I could use them for yesterdays ride. I also received some gift money, so I'm looking at buying some clipless pedals.posted on Sunday, August 17, 2008
Hiking the Hollow Fox Trail
We took a hiking trip this afternoon. There's a new trail that has been a couple years in the making. We walked a bit of it. Here's some pictures for you.
This is me and the kids at the beginning of the hike.
Ewan's first walk in the carrier.
Whenever you find a rock that is hanging, you are obliged to get a picture of someone holding it up. Here's Aspen.
And Here's Ora.
This was at the bottom of the hike before proceeding up a hill to return to the nature center. The bridge in the background is Gregory Blvd, just East of the entrance to the zoo.
The Martindale men.
Labels: Aspen, Enid, Ewan, Ora 4, Ora 5
posted on Sunday, April 15, 2007
Meet the Martindales in 3D
We went to see Meet the Robinsons this morning and as you can see we got the goofy glasses.
The movie was great. Some parts were very predictable, but I didn't see the end coming. One interesting side affect of 3D glasses is that the villains are scarier. The hat is a villain and in a couple of parts flies toward the screen. This scared Aspen a bit.
At first I was looking at the screen and trying to decide if the whole movie was 3D or if only seemed that way because it was a 3D animated movie. I quickly realized that the entire movie was going to be 3D and wondered how the did it. I soon saw the answer on the Disney Channel: When animating a 3D movie, you create a scene by placing all the characters into a set in the software. You can manipulate them however you want to create the scene. Then you place virtual "cameras" in the scene to capture what is going on. By adding a second camera beside the first, you create a 3D affect. One camera records the image the left eye will see and the other records the image the right eye will see. The further you pull the 2 cameras apart the more the objects appear to pop out of the screen. Using this technique, it is easy to make any computer animated movie 3D. The only changes that have to be made is deciding how far apart to place the two cameras for any particular scene.
I also noticed that 3D technology has changed a lot over time. This was my first 3D movie (not counting theme park rides like Spiderman, Terminator and Captain EO), but before the movie they ran a 1953 Disney short film with Donald Duck and Chip & Dale. I took my glasses off briefly during the short and you could distinctly see the 2 images that were on the screen giving a very blurry affect. When I did the same thing during Meet the Robinsons, the 2 images were much closer so it looked out of focus, but you could still watch it. (Now that I know that they can move the two cameras apart for certain scenes, I'm curious if those scenes would look much more blurry than the scene I saw without my glasses.) Now, both movies use different degrees of separating the images; however the same glasses worked for both. My children both had "kids packs" and on the back was the older style, blue and red 3D glasses. I tried watching the movie with those. I saw 4-6 separate images which made it so blurry that I couldn't see a thing.
Anyway, very cool movie! Very cool experience in 3D.
Labels: Aspen, Enid, Ewan, movies, Ora 4, Ora 5
posted on Saturday, March 31, 2007
